As someone going through his second run of ME2 on Hardcore difficulty, and being relatively new to the Mass Effect franchise in general (only got into the first one a few months earlier), and as someone who came to love ME1 for its gameplay thus making me that much more excited for ME2, I have to say: ME2 does combat better than ME1, not only because it actually forces me to think tactically, but also because it approximates actual firearm-based combat on a squad-based level.
The run & gun tactics in ME1 were lots of fun, but ultimately it was not only unrealistic, but stupid as well from a tactical point of view: you're exposing yourself to enemy fire needlessly, without much benefits. And you could stay in one piece of cover in ME1 and stay there the entire fight because you had more or less unlimited ammo with no need to move from where you are whatsoever. As someone with lots of experience in FPS and TPS, having weapons with unlimited ammo is almost like cheating, and with the appropriate fire discipline or mods like Frictionless Materials, you won't ever have to experience overheating from your weapons, especially assault rifles. I admit that having unlimited ammo is extremely gratifying for any shooter player, but it doesn't make for tactically-oriented gameplay.
In ME2, the various changes actually mixes up the combat scenarios. For one, the need to pick up heatsinks means that staying in a single piece of cover will see you run out of ammo pretty quickly, especially for weapons like shotguns or sniper rifles. You really need to be mobile and relocate from cover to cover often to get ammo, especially on higher difficulties where enemies require more shots to take down.
Which leads me to fragility: OP contends to you being tougher in ME2? Given how easily shields seem to be depleted in ME2, and how easy it is for a few shots to take you down, ME2 actually has more fragile characters than in ME1. And this is not taking into account the more prolific heavy weapons in ME2 that means getting hit by rockets (or several) is an even more dangerous affair. Rockets in ME1 did seem to deal more damage, but then again rockets in ME1 aren't as fast as the ones in ME2, and even in ME1 you could still tank rockets with the right build and abilities, like the ever spammable Immunity skill.
And enemies will actually try and FLANK you this time around; while I didn't notice the behavior on a playthrough in Normal difficulty (because you can easily kill the enemies before they had a chance to), on Hardcore I've been flanked by Krogans, YMIR mechs and Mercs pretty often, to the point of me sometimes asking "where the hell did that come from?". And nothing's scarier than a Krogan charging you out of your precious cover. Even the Soldier, which has the most guns, ammo and armor in ME2, can actually get killed pretty quickly if you just stand out in the open trying to run and gun.
Speaking of run and gun, it's a tactic I don't really approve of as one with a military family, hearing and seeing the effects of people in the front line getting shot up because they went rambo and thought they could tank hundred of bullets at once. Of course games don't have the same limitations as real life, but even then many of the best games reward the use of common sense in combat situations: If you don't want to get hit and die, take cover. I used the cover system extensively in ME1, and ME2 just makes it's importance even more paramount, since enemy fire deals more damage than before. As in real combat, you have to actually make each shot count (even if the chances of hitting IRL is pretty low), and dish out the fire at the right moment to reduce vulnerability to counter fire. The only way running and gunning is actually effective in ME2 is against melee-only enemies like husks like in ME1 - but this time, with Scion support on every husk encounter running around just got a lot harder.
Also, OP mentions that the enemies don't use abilities. What? I've been shot with Incinerate several times on Normal difficulty, and on Hardcore getting hit by Shockwaves and the Harbinger's explosive balls is a few of the fastest ways to get killed.
I also don't get the complaint of respawning enemies: in both ME1 and ME2, you could actually mow down all your enemies until you've cleared the area of all opposition (and save on using Unity), and in cases that do have respawning enemies, like Tali's recruitment quest or Grunt's loyalty quest the mechanic is implemented as part of the scenario: Geth reinforcing from dropships and Varren being released unto the field. Even then though I've never encountered a Call of Duty-esque scenario where they throw wave after wave of enemies at you with no end in sight until you reach a certain checkpoint, which isn't how Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2 does it.
Out of all the games I've played that involved shooting, Mass Effect 2 is actually one of the closest I've had to actually taxing my brain in terms of tactics - it's no Ghost Recon or Operation Flashpoint or Red Orchestra, but it's hardly as "brainless" as OP makes it out to be, especially in relation to its predecessor Mass Effect 1.
Modifié par LoweGear, 09 février 2010 - 04:47 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
because he's out of ammo, or C) because he needs to reach a target while BioWare employs the oldest and most outfashioned trick in the book: Respawning enemies. Not only is it unrealistic, it's also again a lazy way of providing a challenge that's otherwise not there. Still, at least in these rare occasions, combat is more than shooting ducks.
